Theresa Reid chronicles the long, often excruciating, and ultimately joyous journey that led her to adopt two little girls from Russia and Ukraine, in an unforgettable true story of fragile hopes and steadfast love.

In Chicago, Theresa Reid and her husband had lucrative professional careers and a beautiful home. What was missing from their lives was children. But they knew that in Eastern Europe, there were children who were missing parents—and they set out to find their family.

There were self-doubts and gut-wrenching fears; mountains of paperwork and nerve-wracking interviews; agonizing choices and false starts. There was the painful awareness of thousands of children languishing in poorly-funded orphanages, waiting with little hope for someone to embrace them and bring them home. And there were byzantine bureaucracies and

poverty-stricken conditions in the former Soviet Republic—where, beyond the borders they crossed and the obstacles they navigated with fierce determination, two little girls waited.

This is Theresa Reid’s emotionally candid, vividly detailed account of how Natalie and Lana came to be her daughters—a journey that takes us not only to Moscow and Kiev but into the deepest parts of a mother’s heart. She addresses the personal issues that arise for many an adoptive parent—including the guilt over taking children away from their roots, the unknowable mysteries of her daughters’ earliest childhoods, and the slow, stumbling steps toward trust and tenderness that played out between them. For any parent, adoptive or not, this book offers not only a compelling story but valuable lessons and insights into the transformative power of loving a child.